Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on AI’s economic impact: ‘There’s very little that we do where we need frontier models’

“Frontier models and how frontier models develop is going to be a very, very interesting thing,” the Goldman Sachs CEO told the crowd at the launch of the firm’s new Small Business AI Institute at the bank’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, where Fortune was in attendance. “But there’s very little that we do where we need frontier models,” he added, seeming to speak generally of economic activity, in the context of small business.

“The technology is moving very, very quickly, and the technology is going to continue to move quickly,” Solomon said. But “you have to separate at some level” the development of frontier models from the everyday tools businesses actually use, he added.

Frontier models, he said, matter for cybersecurity, for defense and for health care, such as around drug discovery and molecule formation. The security fights and the “bigger picture frontier issues that are getting a lot of attention,” Solomon said, “are really separate from using the base tools that exist to support your businesses.”

The AI institute is part of a new $500 million commitment to fund the next chapter of Goldman’s 10,000 Small Businesses program, which will deliver education, access to capital and support services, according to the bank’s announcement. Nearly 20,000 entrepreneurs have completed the program since it launched in 2010, part of an earlier $1.25 billion commitment. Small businesses make up 99% of U.S. businesses, a “hugely important ecosystem,” Solomon said.

Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI each have a piece of it. Anthropic will build a learning series on applied AI for small businesses, run hands-on workshops for program alumni and collaborate on research into how small businesses use AI. Google will offer its Grow with Google AI Professional certificate to almost 20,000 small-business owners and employees, with three months of free access to Google AI Pro. Meta will provide AI tools and training through Muse for Small Business, and OpenAI will run AI workshops through the program’s community college partners.

Slow down

Solomon’s advice to small-business owners ran against the urgency the AI industry usually sells.

“At the moment, this is an expensive technology,” he said. “I don’t think that you have to look at the world and say, ‘I’ve got to be the best at this, I have to have this figured out in the next three weeks.’”

He framed it as a return-on-investment problem. “If you think about token costs and you think about the cost of being on these platforms, the return can come from productivity,” he said, listing sales, customer experience, manufacturing and procurement as places to look. “The important thing is to get it right, not to get it quicker.”

Most of the owners in Goldman’s own survey aren’t spending much yet. In a report released alongside the announcement, 73% of program graduates who use AI said they spend less than $100 a month on it, including 16% who use only free tools. Most rely on chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini (86%) or AI features built into software they already use (54%). Only 18% use agentic AI.

Adoption itself isn’t the problem. The survey, conducted by Babson College in August, found 86% now use AI in their businesses, up from 56% in 2024. But only 15% said AI is fully integrated into their core operations, and 77% said they would benefit from more training and resources.

‘Without a fixed cost base’

Goldman’s pitch for the institute centers on productivity. An owner doing more strategy work would typically hire a strategy consultant, but AI enables them to advance that work without actually hiring somebody. “So it’s not limiting the job, but it’s creating more leverage in the business without a fixed cost base,” Solomon argued.

Goldman’s survey backs him up, for now. Among graduates using AI, 84% reported no change in their workforce because of it. Five percent said they had added positions, and 6% said they had cut staff. Asked what they do with the time AI saves, 56% pointed to strategic planning, 44% to expanded marketing and 31% to new products or services.

The small business owners onstage described AI as augmentation.

Allison Dunn founded Hibiscus Brew, a Caribbean wellness cafe and beverage brand in Brooklyn, during the pandemic. She built it around sorrel, a hibiscus drink steeped with ginger that’s traditionally served at the holidays. She calls AI her “think partner.” It sorts her email, builds her to-do list, fills her calendar and helped develop the cafe’s fall menu, which pairs pumpkin spice with roasted plantain. Every morning at 8 o’clock, it runs her through 10 minutes of public-speaking practice. It also recently solved her biggest headache, an inventory checklist for a cafe that runs on milk, espresso and everything else. She keeps it in the back of the house and treats what it produces as “a first draft.” Customers still get greeted by name “within three seconds.” “AI is not here, I think, to replace,” Dunn said. “It’s people who can use AI might replace you.”

Hagan Walker cofounded Glo Pals, a light-up toy brand whose founders started out as Mississippi State University students with a patented light-up drink cube. He uses AI “all day, every day. My team would say maybe a little too much sometimes.” An AI agent wrote the algorithm that picks the cheapest box size for each order. AI built the theme for the company’s website after three months of iterations, and an agent analyzes its ad data across Google and Meta. One rule holds firm: “anything copyright or illustrative is done by a person,” Walker said, citing legislation around AI and children’s toys. The company is in a hiring sprint and looks for candidates who know the tools. “It’s definitely augmenting,” he said.

Solomon’s institute has three parts, he said: training and learning programs from each partner, research on how small businesses are actually using AI and access to capital. “Access to capital continues to be a constraint,” he said.

Generative AI was used for research assistance and/or transcription of this article. The reporter independently reported and verified the factual claims in this article, and a human editor reviewed it before publication.